Member Article

Behind the business with Jobinasecond.com

Jobinasecond is the first SMS based job-matching service in the world and it is aimed at the temp. and part time work market. CEO Assaf Shalvi takes Bdaily behind the business.

What key challenges has the company recently faced?

From our first months of activity we have seen that there is a good level of interest around our proposition and we’ve had a few hundred jobs posted. The main challenge now is to create a closer relationship with our customers. In order to fully benefit from our service and become more efficient, employers should consider us at the resourcing stage, which will enable them to save on fixed costs.

We also constantly work on cutting the time it takes us to match a job. We started with more than an hour on average, and managed to reduce this to less than 30 minutes. We think that we can do even better and fulfil jobs in 10 minutes!

What is your biggest achievement over the past six months?

We launched Jobinasecond in June 2012 so these were our first six months of operations and we have come a long way. We have effectively created a new service and we continue to improve on its speed and quality.

I can think of a number of great achievement – 1 is filling some tough jobs instantly – 12 safety stewards that were needed for a very large football club on the last minute, 20 film extras for a film set on the day! and we made it.

The second is our win of the Tech Entrepreneur’s Week Venture Capital competition. We competed against more than 200 companies and were selected as the number 1 start-up.

What is the biggest focus for the coming year?

By the end of 2013 we want jobinasecond to be the way businesses deal with urgent needs for workers. We also want to be the way young people get temp work in London and, Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds. We started in London in June and already have more than 10,000 people working through our system. We want to make it to 100,000 and then 1,000,000.

According to the government there are 3m people in the UK that are looking to work more hours. There are 500,000 students in London, 200,000 people that are between jobs and about 200,000 that are here from the commonwealth on a gap year and look to work while travelling.

On the other hand businesses in the city can do so much more if they could have flexible and reliable support when they need it. Someone to give a hand in the business, go out and promote, fill in on an event, or support on a busy shift.

If you had to choose one top piece of advice for someone just starting out in business, or is currently operating within your industry sector, what would that be?

In the creation of every successful business there are two critical factors, numbers and people. By this I mean that as much as a solid business plan is key, so is the human element.

Having a strong team with the right attitude will make a difference as will the interactions you have with people outside the company. Sitting long hours in the office still needs to happen, but your work should also involve talking to people, spreading the message, getting feedback and networking. Ultimately a company predominantly grows outside the office: something to keep in mind.

Can you share with us your view on the current landscape of business, in your region or generally, and where your organisation sits within it?

If you look at what is available for temp workers and businesses at the moment who look to hire on short notice you will find that there are 2 options:

1. Job boards – with Gumtree probably being the most common choice. The problem with job boards is that they all work on the basis of CVs. What are you looking to find on a CV of a deliver driver you want to hire for the day? they are also quite expensive and you pay up front, and you mostly receive hundreds of responses, mostly irrelevant to your job ad.

2. Agencies – there are thousands of agencies out there that can help you with staff. However unless you already have a relationship with an agency you will not be able to get someone in quickly. Agencies can also be very expensive so the business ends up paying a lot and the worker gets very little.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .